User blog:NedWolfkin/Ned's Nitpicks Volume 9: Jeff OCs
Today on Ned's Nitpicks, instead of making fun of one particular story, I'm going to tear a whole bunch of them up at once. Jeff the Killer inspired stories. They all suck, and I'm going to elaborate why! Let's start with the biggest issue: they are written in a manner insensitive to victims of abuse, bullying, rape, self harm, suicide, and alcoholism. You would think that these stories would be cautionary tales of what could happen if you push someone too far, but instead they are mainly used as set-ups. The authors of the stories go "yeah, this happened" and "yeah, that happened" and throw them in there as if they are typing "then the weather turned cold" or "the door was locked". They are written as if they are some minor inconvenience instead of a serious issue that is still relevant in the 21st century. Honestly, it's quite disgusting to see someone insensitively use these real-life tragedies as simple plot points in a cheap effort to shock their readers. As for alcoholics, they are often played as one-dimensional abusive bullies, instead of people suffering from a crippling, sometimes embarrassing life threatening addiction. I will admit that some alcoholics are abusive, but there are many more who aren't. It gets even more offensive when other characters seem blissfully unaware that the main character is being abused or bullied. This is either as a result of lazy writing or insensitivity towards the fact that abuse is often overlooked in real life. The next biggest issue is that the lack of originality has rendered these stories completely boring. They all tell the same story: main character is bullied and/or abused, undergoes a transformation, then becomes a serial killer. While some stories are just literal rewrites of Jeff's story with different characters, others shake things up. Sometimes the main character becomes a serial killer, sometimes they become some magical entity. Sometimes the main character only suffers from bullying, sometimes they simply have a crappy relationship with their parents. No matter what the differences are, they always have the same plot points. The stories rehash tired old tropes that were around longer than Creepypasta itself. Bully characters are sometimes rich and often get away with their bad behavior due to nepotism and bribery. The abused-character-becomes-a-psychopath has been done to death by the time Jeff came out, so it really wasn't offering us anything fresh to begin with. The main characters are NEVER likeable because they are all mostly Mary Sues. They are always sooo talented, and beautiful, and smart, and loved by everyone (while simultaneously being tormented by everyone), and they never do anything wrong and everyone is just soooo mean to them for no reason at all! The one trap amateur writers often fall into is that they make their main characters perfect goody two-shoes who are unrelatable to the reader. They might have one or two things the reader can relate to (i.e. being bullied, or having a specific hobby), but mostly they come off as too perfect to be likeable. Another thing that makes the main characters so bland is that they are often just self-inserts of how the author sees themselves, or what they want to be. Ironically while the main characters are overstuffed, every other character in these stories are one dimensional and are usually little else that soulless objects whose sole purpose is to move the story forward. I doubt anyone who writes these stories knows how to do a simple spell check. The stories are often riddled with spelling and grammar issues, plot holes, tense swaps, use script style for dialogue, improper capitalizations, lack of quotation marks and proper punctuation, and every other possible writing problem you can possibly think of. A good many of them are written in a wall of text that make it impossible to read. Besides mechanical issues, the stories seem lazily written. Nothing actually creepy happens in them, the writers rely too much on the shock of abuse and bullying for a cheap scare (as we've already established). A common problem with these stories is their lack of detail. The authors of these stories will simply summarize the story, or just simply type a plot point without going into any detail. We don't actually see these things happen, we are just told that they happened. Ironically while plot points are often summarized to the point where if you miss the three or four words dedicated to them you miss them, great detail is given to stuff that isn't important. The author will simply say "The bully beat them up then burned their face and now they look like Jeff", while at the same time telling us stupid crap like everything about the OC, or what their room looked like. Of course, a lot of the lazy feeling comes from the fact that the authors didn't even care to think of an original story, they just copied something that was stale to begin with. On the other hand, sometimes these stories are too overstuffed with filler that bores the reader to the point where they just quit (if the low quality and repetitive plot hasn't made them do that already). The violence in these stories are ALWAYS cartoonish and unrealistic. Characters are stabbed, shot, thrown from great heights, burnt, cut open, mutilated, and have other things happen to them that would either seriously injure or kill someone in real life. Instead, characters walk away from should-be fatal situations as if they were little else than breaking a fingernail. Apparently, characters don't scar in these stories unless they serve as the main character's "transformed" look. The transformation scenes are just as unrealistic. A lot of times these stories take the Jeff route by having the main character's face soaked with alcohol and bleach before being set on fire. Not only is drinking alcohol and bleach not flammable, but also they would also act as a retardant and extinguish the flames. Someone who just had their face set on fire would be charred and have red peeling skin. The redness would be not only from the burns, but from the irritation caused by the bleach. Their hair is almost always burnt black, instead of crispy and charred off (or at least stripped of its color if the flames didn't touch them). On top of all that, these characters often mutilate themselves in ways that would seriously injure and possibly kill them. They give themselves Glasgow smiles, cut off their eye-lids and lips, and do all other kinds of stupid crap that would land them in a psychiatric ward in real life. These transformations almost always include the main character wearing a hoodie. Speaking of critical research failure, these stories are unrealistic even ignoring the cartoonish violence. Violence happens in areas that should be populated such as schools, nobody seems concerned about the main characters, In 99% of these Jeff inspired stories, the main character kills their parents even if they haven't done anything wrong. This often gives the main character to spout their lame catchphrase (usually a variation of Jeff's "GO TO SLEEP!"). After killing their parents they become "Creepypastas". No, not "Creepypasta characters", just "Creepypastas". Apparently the authors think that "Creepypasta" is a word used to describe a character who has become a murderer, rather than an internet horror sub-genre. It would be like calling an explorer "an adventure" or a fighter "an action". It sounds lazy and unintelligent. In most of these stories the main character meets Jeff the Killer and becomes his boyfriend or girlfriend. Not only is it unrealistic that someone who has been bullied to the point of murderous insanity would fall in love, it is unlikely they wouldn't become abusive or even kill their "lover" somewhere down the line. Authors who acknowledge Jane, who was never even actually canon in the first place, usually kill her off so that their OC can be with Jeff. Either that or they insult other OCs for getting with him, BECAUSE THEIRS IS JEFF'S ONLY ONE U GUIZE! Somehow Jeff is almost always able to kiss despite not having lips. The most disturbing part of the love concept is that Jeff is a teenage boy that we can guess is around 12-13 years old. Not only do these stories sometimes sexualize him, but they also have him with someone older (16 to 18-ish) without any notable aging. So the main character becomes a murderer who goes around killing people and is somehow never caught. These stories often have a headline or news broadcast (which usually have unrealistic and unprofessional wording), so obviously these OCs are wanted criminals. Somehow or other they are never caught, despite being out in the daylight, going for walks, buying things, going on dates, and other things in the public eye. I imagine them holding hands with Jeff, prancing down a busy sidewalk and swinging knives, slicing open the random people they pass by. I'm going to finish this rant by complaining about a less common theme: the so-called "Slender Mansion". In a lot of these stories it turns out that the main character is Slender Man's long lost child, or Jeff's half sibling, or whatever else. They end up meeting up with their long-lost relative who takes them to the Slender Mansion, a rundown mansion in the middle of the woods that nobody has been able to find for some reason. The rest of the "Creepypastas" (sic) live in this mansion. Instead of being a predator who stalks and psychologically tortures his victims before doing God-knows-what to them, Slender Man is now a loving, doting father and the boss of the Creepypasta Bunch who sends them on murder missions. Despite not having a mouth, Slender Man is somehow able to talk. Smile.dog is reverted to a fun loving little puppy who chases a ball all day, Jeff and all the other male characters act like loving foster brothers who playfully tease each other (and lust over the OC if its a girl), the female "Creepypastas" (sic) act as sister characters to the OC if it is female, and BEN is now just an anime-esque version of Link with bloody eye sockets. In fact, the whole thing is anime-esque. I honestly don't know what these authors are thinking with this concept. Why would you try to turn something that is supposed to be scary into something warm? While these characters were never scary to begin with, they are now somehow even less scary. They are a warm, loving family of misfits who go on fun little human-hunting expeditions together. And with that, I'm going to wish you all a good day. Category:Blog posts